I'm ashamed

 

I'm ashamed
23 January 2014

Shame is not an emotion I like.  It leaves me feeling uncomfortable and generally outlasts it’s welcome.  Lingering and lingering, much as I wish it was gone.

And at present, I’m feeling shame.  Even worse, I’m feeling ashamed.

Deeply so.

Worst of all, I’m not ashamed by my own actions, and hence self-loathing and self-recriminations are not an option.  I’m not the perpetrator.  The instigator of my shame.

Instead, I am blind with fury, at someone I don’t even know.  He is at the core of my ire.  And I’m happy to admit, that I’ve had a few rather violent fantasties about how I’m going to off this individual.  Cause life is surely too good for him.

I don’t believe in the death penalty.  Sorry, I can’t lie about it.  I abhor violence and the whole eye for an eye thing leaves me cold. 

Maybe this is partly due to the fact that I feel that death is just too easy.  It’s too final and relieves the criminal or the wrong-doer of emotional trauma after the deed is done, as they are no longer there.  Whereas the suffering of their victims, simply carries on, and on, and on.  Stretching on forever and ever.  So perhaps in essence, the relief of death is too good for them. 

But on this particular occasion?  Well I’m discovering a sadistic core, I never even knew I had.

And the cause of my anger?  The reason I’m so hell bent?

How can I live in a world where a twenty seven year old man, rapes a nine year old girl repeatedly, all night long?  Where she’s innocently walking from the home of her mother, to the home of her father, and she is sexually assaulted?  Where in an effort, to protect his anonymity and kill his victim, the rapist pours oil over her, laughs and sets her alight?

My mind cannot fathom cruelty of that kind.  It doesn’t want to.

My youngest son is nine.  He’s just a little boy, living in a world of his own.  His days are filled with the pleasures of being a child and the grand adventure that is life.  He doesn’t know cruelty.  He wouldn’t understand a random stranger, doing unimaginable things to him and then trying to kill him.  With extreme violence, causing unbearable pain and suffering. 

How can anyone?

Children are our future.  Every single one of them is precious.  They are to be protected and revered.  Shielded from the harshness and unforgiving cruelties of life.  Nurtured so that they can reach their full potential.

But this little girl?  Well, she’s alive.  Her whole body is covered in burn wounds, and I believe she is breathing through a tube in her mouth.  She has months and years of physical therapy and pain ahead of her, as her body will hopefully slowly start to heal.

But her soul?  I don’t think it can be fixed.  Chances are she’ll never feel safe again.  The innocence of childhood is lost for her.  Never again, will she walk home from school, or out with her friends, without fear in her heart.  For the rest of her life, she will look over her shoulder.  Feel unsafe when a man invades her personal space.

One can attempt to soothe her.  To shower her with love.  To give support to her and her family.  To be understanding.  To be compassionate.

But one can never give back that which she has lost.  Her belief that people are good.  That she deserves to be cherished, not hurt. 

In a few years’ time, when the raw wounds have healed, and all that remains are the burn scars, she will still remember.  When we have forgotten already.  She will remember. 

She might be on the playground with her friends at school, laughing and seeming to have fun.  But in a quiet moment, she’ll remember.

And as for this monster?  Well I’ve thought up a few different story lines.  Most of them entail dismembering with a blunt, rusted knife.  Slowly.  While he’s awake.  Publicly.  On a stake.  In the hot boiling sun.  Actually, best case scenario, is that he lives...

I’ve had some time, to give this some thought.

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